In the manufacturing process for making glass, raw materials including sand, lime, soda ash and other ingredients are fed into a furnace, sometimes called a glass tank. The raw materials are subjected to temperature above about 2,800° F. in the glass furnace which causes the raw materials to melt and thereby form a molten bed of glass that exits the glass furnace for further downstream processing into glass products.
The most common way of heating the glass furnace is through the combustion of a hydrocarbon fuel source, such as natural gas or oil. The hydrocarbon fuel is mixed with combustion air inside the furnace and combusted to thereby transfer the combustion heat energy to the raw materials and glass melt prior to exiting the furnace.
In order to improve the thermal efficiency of the combustion process, the combustion air used to combust the fuel is preheated by means of regenerator structures. More specifically, a supply of combustion air is preheated in a honeycombed pack of checker bricks contained within the interior of the regenerator structure. More specifically, fresh combustion air is drawn up through the pack of heated checker bricks in the regenerator structure and preheated by means of heat transfer. The pre-heated combustion air may then be mixed with the fuel, combusted. Waste combustion gas exits the glass furnace and passes through a second regenerator structure. As the waste gasses pass through the second regenerator the checker bricks in the pack are heated by means of heat transferred from the waste gas. After a predetermined time has elapsed (e.g., after about 15-30 minutes), the process cycle is reversed so that the checker bricks in one of the regenerator structures that were being heated by heat transfer with the waste gas are then used to preheat the fresh combustion air while the checker bricks in the other regenerator structures that were used to preheat the combustion air are then re-heated by heat transfer with the waste combustion gas. See in this regard, U.S. Pat. No. 3,326,541 (the entire content of which is expressly incorporated hereinto by reference).
The checker bricks used in in the packs of glass furnace regenerator structures need to be replaced near or at the end of their useful life in order to maintain optimal production efficiencies. It is currently difficult to replace the checker bricks when it may be desired for them to be replaced. Moreover, the current techniques for installing and/or replacing the individual checker bricks within a glass furnace regenerator structure is very labor intensive, possibly taking many weeks as it requires the placement of literally thousands of checker bricks to form the pack.
It can be appreciated therefore, that if the checker bricks of the regenerator structure could be prefabricated into self-supporting modules, then the furnace down time required for the replacement and/or installation of the checker brick pack could be substantially decreased. It is towards providing such improvements that the embodiments of the present invention are directed.